Interoperating with Unmanaged Code

The Microsoft .NET Framework promotes interaction with COM components, COM+ services, external type libraries, and many operating system services. Data types, method signatures, and error-handling mechanisms vary between managed and unmanaged object models. To simplify interoperation between .NET Framework components and unmanaged code and to ease the migration path, the common language runtime conceals from both clients and servers the differences in these object models.

Code executing under the control of the runtime is called managed code. Conversely, code that runs outside the runtime is called unmanaged code. COM components, ActiveX interfaces, and Win32 API functions are examples of unmanaged code.